Travelling by train in India is one of the greatest things I've experienced till now. You get to the train and you find your names printed on a sheet stuck to the door of your carriage. the spellings are just poetic. In the train there is no second when you get bored and loose the poetic touch of travelling across the sub-continent. You can get a chai, food of any kind, any gadget (inclusive of BOOKS sold by a blind man walking up and down the train) any time, day and night. and people offer you food and chat, curious of where do you belong and who you are (rather, of what the name of all your relatives till the third generation are). To get a ticket you get to queue sometimes for 2 hours. Long indeed, but nothing new for anybody who has tried to travel by train in Italy. And you can always go to a travel agent who will charge you very little to do everything for you.
Yet the most incredible bit was at the train station, that very long queue. For example there is a counter only for ladies and people with "special needs", not to get harassed or mistreated. So that they can fight among themselves in the priority queue. Moreover, on top of that counter you have an interesting list of categories of people entitled to have a discount on train fares...among them I would like to highlight a pair of quite extraordinary ones I'm sure you can only find in India, carved into a marble board as is the case of my picture below:
- full discount for "widow of police man killed in action against terrorists and extremists"
- full discount for "unemployed youth up to the age of 35 travelling for attending interviews for jobs (in central government only)"
- 75% for "haemophilia patients"
- full discount for "non infectious leprosy patiens"
etc etc...
up to you to decide if this is hilarious, fair, or simply & uniquely indian!
1 comment:
This is great info to know.
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